Letters

^3. You tell me that Bonosus, like a true son of the Fish, has taken to the water. As for me who am still foul with my old stains, like the basilisk and the scorpion I haunt the dry places. Bonosus has his heel already on the serpent's head, while I am still as food to the same serpent which by divine appointment devours the earth. He can scale already that ladder of which the psalms of degrees are a type; while I, still weeping on its first step, hardly know whether I shall ever be able to say: “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence comes my help.” Amid the threatening billows of the world he is sitting in the safe shelter of his island, that is, of the church's pale, and it may be that even now, like John, he is being called to eat God's book; while I, still lying in the sepulchre of my sins and bound with the chains of my iniquities, wait for the Lord's command in the Gospel: “Jerome, come forth.” But Bonosus has done more than this. Like the prophet he has carried his girdle across the Euphrates (for all the devil's strength is in the loins), and has hidden it there in a hole of the rock. Then, afterwards finding it rent, he has sung: “O Lord, you have possessed my reins. You have broken my bonds in sunder. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.” But as for me, Nebuchadnezzar has brought me in chains to Babylon, to the babel that is of a distracted mind. There he has laid upon me the yoke of captivity; there inserting in my nostrils a ring of iron, he has commanded me to sing one of the songs of Zion. To whom I have said, “The Lord looses the prisoners; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.” To complete my contrast in a single sentence, while I pray for mercy Bonosus looks for a crown.